A busy summer

The Simplicity skirt in the last post was abandoned and still remains insewn, because only a couple of days later, we sold our house! We'd already found the perfect place to buy, and almost unbelievably, we got it! After a very stressful couple of months (thanks to the way UK property transactions work), we moved at the end of July, and had a fantastic summer enjoying space, glorious space.  Then it was back to school and a busy (as ever) September with the girls' birthdays. In the mean time I've become rather addicted to Instagram, and rather neglectful of my DSLR (in addition to this blog). Here's a small selection of my Instagrammed photos from the latter half of summer into Autumn.

Simplicity 2152

This is my project for the week - a skirt for me, from a proper pattern for the first time. Or at least making a muslin. And lots of mistakes, no doubt!

Raspberry ripple chevron picnic mat

I thought I was immune to the chevron craze, but this post over at Treefall Design finally gave me a hankering after something (anything!) chevron-y. With no chevron fabric in stock at any of my favourite online fabric shops I headed off to Ikea for stripy fabric with the idea that I could make my own. Of course, I was far from the first to have that very idea. Dana from MADE has a great tutorial on how to do it, and if the yellow fabric had been in stock in my local Ikea I think I would have ended up making exactly the same cushion. However all I could get my hands on was a much wider cerise and white stripe. I pieced it without much of an idea about what to make with the resulting patchwork fabric, thinking perhaps of a large tote or beach bag, but when it was done it cried out to be laid flat. I settled on a small picnic mat, using some leftover polyester for a waterproof backing as I did for the one I made last year. It was surprisingly fun to put together, and I can't look at the finished mat without thinking of raspberry ripple ice cream! I think I'd like to make a few more of these.

Pacman Macbook sleeve

I originally intended to make this for my husband as a Christmas present, but that proved to be too ambitious and he had to wait until March for it.

This is the second time I've used the fantastic Laptop Sleeve Tutorial, by amyalamode, and once again I'm really pleased with the results.

The question everyone asks, though, is where is Pac Man?

I don't know! He's not there. In fact thought it might have been a good idea to try and find some Pac Man buttons, but perhaps that would have made it a little too childish. I quite like the simple black buttons with the turquoise accent.

Bread, glorious bread

I'm completely astonished that I've managed to live for 34 years without knowing it's possible to make bread as easily as in this recipe for cold-rise breakfast bread rolls by Anne's Food. No kneading (well I did a little, just to get a more even texture) but best of all no bother about finding a warm enough place to let the dough rise and no stress when hasn't doubled in size in the time the flour-packet recipe insists it should. In this recipe, you simply leave the dough to rise in the fridge overnight, ready to bake first thing in the morning, and the best bit is the slow rise gives an even better flavour. As I didn't have any fresh yeast, I just replaced the 10g specified in the recipe with 5g of dried active yeast, used lukewarm water and dissolved the honey in it before adding the yeast and leaving to froth up a bit before mixing with the other ingredients and following the rest of the recipe.

Delicious! I'm going to struggle not to make these every single day.

Hello!

Well here I am again, out of winter hibernation! I've been busy working on our house for the past few months, and have struggled to fit in time for other projects. But that's just about finished now, which means a little bit more free time, and personally I find there's no better inspiration to be creative than a good dose of spring sunshine, and colour that you can almost taste.

I can't remember if I've shared this before, but is the 'sky' wall in El's room, complete with wall stickers from Nouvelles Images. As a sidenote, I've found these low-tack stickers to be a little too low-tack for my painted walls. I'm not a particular fan of stickers and would have painted the tree as a mural if we weren't planning to move soon. I do love the graphic style of these stickers.

Autumn (?) colour...

I took these photos on our little country walk on Sunday afternoon, when the air was still warm, the sky was blue and the oak trees didn't seem to think it was autumn. (Or perhaps it is still too early for them? I really should know!)

Well, since the weekend, autumn has well and truly hit with a vengeance! In fact it feels more like winter. We have the worst winds here, truly, I'm sure I would be much more enthusiastic about getting outdoors if they weren't so bad. For now I think I'll just use them as an excuse to stay indoors and make soup.